Photos

Exploring the Abandoned Buildings and Roadside Attractions Along Route 66 (PHOTOS)

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Route 66 starts in Chicago, Ill., and ends in Santa Monica, Calif. Interstate 40 replaced much of the highway by the late 1960s, and the towns along 66 slowly died. (Liz Roll)

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Route 66 starts in Chicago, Ill., and ends in Santa Monica, Calif. Interstate 40 replaced much of the highway by the late 1960s, and the towns along 66 slowly died. (Liz Roll)

Route 66 was officially opened for motorists on November 11, 1926, though parts of the route had been used since the 1850s. The 2,448-mile road with many nicknames connected rural Midwestern communities to Chicago and to California, and was called the "road to opportunity" by migrants heading west and those fleeing the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

After World War II, businesses along the interstate boomed as Americans were more mobile than ever before. Restaurants, motels, auto service garages and roadside attractions popped up out of the desert to provide food, comfort, assistance and entertainment to thousands of travelers. In the 1950s, Route 66 became the main path for vacationers heading to Los Angeles, and tourism became a major money-maker for the route. Motels modeled after teepees, Native American gift shops and reptile farms sprouted and flanked the highway. The country's first drive-through restaurant was built along Route 66 in Springfield, Missouri, to meet the needs of customers on the go, giving rise to the fast food movement.

(MORE: America's Vanishing Roadside Rest Stops)

In 1956, with the passing of the Federal Aid Highway Act, modern interstates began to replace sections of Route 66, and by 1970, nearly all of the original route was bypassed by four-lane highways, including Interstate 40. In 1985, Route 66 was officially decommissioned, according to Smithsonianmag.com.

But the nostalgia and romance of the historic route had all but disappeared. Since 1999, the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program has been involved in the repair and preservation of sections and attractions along Route 66. One of the locations the program has helped to restore is the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona, where photographer Liz Roll and her brother, niece and nephew stayed during a trip to capture the road and its abandoned locations.

Retro neon signs and hand-painted billboards advertised the still-running businesses Roll encountered, nestled among abandoned towns and defunct roadside attractions.

"I loved the old retro stuff, hotel signs and trading posts," Roll told weather.com. "I also loved the abandoned sites, and thought it was curious that the only things at the exits off I-40 were these old trading posts. Nothing else, no towns, no anything."

(MORE: Exploring Creepy, Abandoned North America with Liz Roll)

Abandoned restaurants covered in graffiti, peeling kitsch and empty trading posts selling rocks and petrified wood caught Roll's eye.

"It's a wacky mix of stuff: dinosaurs, trading posts, giant rabbits, excellent retro signs, of course the Wigwam," Roll said. "I love all the weird shapes...The Plainsman Dining Room, which had a gun-shaped sign, the tree sign for the Blue Spruce Lodge, the random teepees. It's as if they had to be weirder or odder than the next guy to attract customers back in the day."

Roll said it was sad at times to see the abandoned locations and imagine how the booming and busy Route 66 may have been 70 years ago. Many of the small towns along the way were like ghost towns, and when stopping for a meal at a steakhouse in Holbrook, Roll and her family were the only customers. The photographer said that she walked around making up stories in her mind of travelers headed west.

While "the mother road," as John Steinbeck named it in The Grapes of Wrath, is no longer a major road west, it has become a destination itself for history buffs and urban explorers like Roll. With its unique art, quirky signs and weird attractions, Route 66 is a road back in time, holding the stories of travelers and those in search of a new life.